March 26, 2004

Now Playing Off Broadway, Virtual-Music War

By JESSE McKINLEY

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

David Weinstein, composer of "The Joys of Sex," is using a virtual orchestra machine in the show, but a union objects.

Just a year after the battle over virtual orchestras helped shut down most of Broadway for four days, a new skirmish has broken out Off Broadway, this time touching on questions of artistic freedom, the generation gap and the difference between a machine and a musical instrument.

At issue is a plan to use a Sinfonia, one of several virtual-orchestra machines, in the new Off Broadway musical "The Joys of Sex," a decision that has the musicians' union threatening to picket and the show's producer showing no sign of backing down. The show, which is in rehearsal, is to open in May.

David Weinstein, the 28-year-old composer who is making his Off Broadway debut with the show, notes that he was reared in a period steeped in techno, electronica and other electronic music. He says he simply wants to use the Sinfonia to enhance his show's band with what he calls a new electronic instrument.

"We live in 2004, and the shows themselves are becoming — the music itself is becoming — more synthetic," Mr. Weinstein said. "And our show, the one I wrote in 2001, is more synthetic. And the Sinfonia is an instrument that can work with these synthetic sounds and create the sound of the show as I want it."

Union officials don't see it that way.

"We think this machine is designed for the sole purpose of eliminating live music for the purpose of reaping profits," said David Lennon, the president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the Broadway musicians' union. "Their attempt to turn this machine, and I tell you that this is a machine, into an instrument is just another ploy. The synthesizer is a musical instrument played by a musician. A virtual orchestra machine is just that. I would not equate those two, ever."

Last March the union shut down almost all of Broadway's musicals for four days — at a cost of $5 million to the industry — over an effort to reduce the minimum number of players required in each Broadway theater. Producers threatened to introduce the Sinfonia to orchestra pits instead of live musicians, but that never happened. Seventeen shows were affected, as well as several others that were in rehearsal.

The new fight has been joined in a place few expected: Off Broadway, at the Variety Arts on Third Avenue, which has no general contract with the musicians' union and thus is not in breach of any deal. (That said, many Off Broadway producers strike agreements with the union to ensure the use of union musicians.) Only one of the show's three musicians is a union member, but all three have been called in for meetings with union officials.

Despite having less clout off Broadway than on — the union hasn't yet even confirmed that it will picket "Sex" — Mr. Lennon says his group plans to press the argument wherever the Sinfonia is used.

Both the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the New York Central Labor Council have also pledged to support the union in its fight against the virtual orchestra, he said.

"This is not a mystery here," Mr. Lennon said. "The virtual-orchestra machine makers want to help it gain acceptance in the live performance arena, and they weren't able to do it on Broadway, so they figured they would try to do it off Broadway."

Ben Sprecher, the show's producer, and Mr. Weinstein say they are not part of any plot and have no intention of eliminating any jobs, union or otherwise.

"Sex" had three musicians when it played the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival, they note, and it will have three musicians at the Variety Arts, including one playing a virtual orchestra machine.

Mr. Sprecher said he mentioned that "Sex" planned to use the Sinfonia only as a courtesy during initial conversations about working out a union-approved deal. The union was not pleased. "It was as if I put a four-day-old dead tuna in the room," Mr. Sprecher said.

Shortly after, Mr. Sprecher said, the union offered him a contract that included a clause stating that the show could not use a virtual orchestra machine, which the producer rejected.

Its creators say the Sinfonia, which was introduced about three years ago, can access tens of thousands of digital samples of instruments and recreate nuanced sounds, complete with tempo changes and articulations of different instruments and instrument sections.

Jeff Lazarus, the chief executive of Realtime Music Solutions, the Manhattan company that makes the Sinfonia, said the device simply elaborated on what Broadway synthesizers had been doing for years.

"What we're trying to accomplish is something that is happening already," Mr. Lazarus said from London, where he was preparing to introduce a Sinfonia to a slimmed-down version of "Les Misérables," a development that raised the ire of the British musicians' union.

"We're just doing it better," he said.

The Realtime Web site (www.rms.biz) lists several dozen productions — including national tours of Broadway shows — that have used the Sinfonia.

Realtime filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in early March contending that Local 802 unfairly prevented performing arts companies from using Realtime's product. The union denies the accusation.

The complaint stemmed from a deal Local 802 reached with the Opera Company of Brooklyn to ban the use of the virtual orchestra machine in future productions.

The machine is costing the production $25,000 for the length of the run. Mr. Sprecher said he had no intention of pulling the Sinfonia from "The Joys of Sex," pickets or no pickets.

He had a giant sign made this week stating that the show was being played by live musicians; he plans to post it in front of the Variety Arts.

Mr. Weinstein, himself a member of the Los Angeles local of the American Federation of Musicians, said his decision to use the Sinfonia was an artistic one.

He is particularly intrigued, he said, by the way the Sinfonia creates sounds that might be difficult to make with acoustic and even current electronic instruments.

"I'll start with the sound of a Rhodes piano, and I'll take it and play with it," he said, referring to a popular variety of electric piano. "I'll take that sample or that sound and start manipulating it to get it where I think it does the same job as a Rhodes, but it gives you a slightly altered feel. And that's the sound I wanted for the show."

Mr. Lennon does not think much of Mr. Weinstein's argument.

"Claiming to have composed for the virtual orchestra is about as valid as claiming to have composed for a tape recorder," he said.